This invention relates to a kite in the shape of an aircraft, such as an airplane, and more particularly, aircraft kites in which assembly is made simple, storage and shipping is made simple, and flying is made simple.
Aircraft kites such as kites in the shape of airplanes, space craft, and fanciful flying animals have been made by others. However, there are substantial disadvantages to making aircraft kites that physically look like a true vintage Sopwith Camel and Fokker-era single winged, bi-winged, or tri-winged airplanes, with their rectangular-shaped wings. In order to maintain the wings' shape in flight, previous approaches included lining both the leading and outer edges of the wing with spars made of rigid material such as wooden, plastic or metal rods or tubes. Another approach included extensive use of struts and braces.
These approaches are unsatisfactory because of the excessive number of parts required for assembly and the resulting difficulty of assembly. Since both the leading edge and outer edge are reinforced using a spar, the wing cannot be rolled up when being stored or shipped. Thus, once assembled, such a kite, with its numerous rigid struts and spars, would be vulnerable to being damaged during shipment, on the sale room floor, or when it is transported to the desired flight location. What is needed is a way to reduce the number of rigid parts and still ensure that the wing would maintain its rectangular shape in flight for maximum enjoyment of the kite. In particular, removal of the outer edge wing spar and as many fuselage rods and spars as possible is desirable for storage and shipping considerations.
Still another approach involved foregoing the rectangular shape and using a straight leading edge supported by a spar, but only a curved trailing edge so that in flight the wind force would be sufficient to maintain the shape of the wing. This is also unsatisfactory since the aforementioned vintage planes had rectangular wings. Kite wings that have curved trailing edges, therefore, do not appear like these vintage planes during flight.
Similarly, other aircraft kites such as fanciful space craft and animal kites have suffered from the need for an excessive number of rods, struts, and spars to maintain the unique shape during flight. What was needed was a method for minimizing the number of rods and struts so as to minimize the amount of space that is required to maximize the enjoyment of the operator when transporting, assembling, flying, and disassembling such a kite.
Additionally, the aforementioned aircraft kites generally have a degree of instability that is unpleasant and discouraging to novice and veteran kite fliers alike. What is needed is a method for increasing stability and performance of these kites in flight in order to improve the chances of a pleasant kite-flying experience by the operator under a large spectrum of wind conditions.
Also, most or all mono-winged, bi-winged, and tri-winged aircraft kites are limited to their particular configuration. What was needed was a way to allow the operator to choose the number of wings to attach to the kite depending on either the particular flight conditions or simply the particular flying experience desired by the operator on that day. Additionally, such wing modularization would reduce the costs of manufacturing such winged aircraft kites.